Thanks to Steve Stilwell for the link. I like They Made Me a Book Collector, from a Milo March novel by M. E. Chaber, probably the first LSD book. If I were at home, I could tell you the original title.

The Tomb Raider beauty, a 31-year-old mum of three, came four places above her actor lover Brad Pitt.

Elvis Presley was second, ahead of Marilyn Monroe. Video game heroine Lara Croft, played on screen by Angelina, was sixth.

Jolie’s former girlfriend Jenny Shimziu tells the programme, the 100 Greatest Sex Symbols: “I don’t think there’s one person that would say no to Angelina, in bed or just having a cup of coffee with her.”

MCDONOUGH, Ga. - Rhiannon Barnes may be the luckiest 15-month-old ever. Or maybe her baby sitter is the fortunate one. While playing with a thrift store book bought earlier in the day for 25 cents, Rhiannon uncovered $1,300 in cash stuck between the pages. Her baby sitter Sheila Laughridge said she only bought the book at Rhiannon's insistence and was surprised when the toddler found a brown paper bag full of $100s, $50s, $20s and $10s.

Laughridge took the money, which dated as far back as the 1960s, to a local bank, where she received only $300 in exchange because most of the bills were in pieces. The rest of the tattered money was sent to the U.S. treasury department.

Rhiannon's mother, Shirley Barnes, joked that she's considering using her daughter's new found talent more.

"What I want to do is put pieces of paper with number on them out on the table and have her pick them so that maybe we can win the lottery," she said.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Warner Bros. is aiming to make comic-book geeks around the world pee their pants. They have hired a team of writers to script a live-action feature film which will include most of DC Comics superhero line-up: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, and more.

Kiernan and Michele Mulroney have been hired to write a big screen Justice League of America movie. You might recognize their names, because they’re the hot Hollywood scribes of the month (they wrote a draft of the Kiefer Sutherland’s Mirrors which starts shooting in May).

Judy and I are about to leave for Dallas, Texas, where we'll be attending ConDFW this weekend. We'll stay in Arlington with friends on Sunday night and arrive back here in Alvin late on Monday. Given my aversion to being out of the house for more than twenty minutes, I'm not particularly looking forward to the trip, though I know I'll have a great time once I get to the convention.

Assuming the hotel has wireless Internet access, I might work in a little blogging. My first panel is at 6:00 this evening, and in fact, here's my whole schedule:

So you want to be a writer?That’s easy!Oh, you want to be a SUCCESSFUL writer.That’s a different story.Industry pros try to define what they think makes a writer more likely to thrive.Who knows, they might even be right.

Industry pros discuss the state of the children’s fiction market.What is the market looking for?What are the most common mistakes and missteps?What has been done to death?And how can you be a part of children’s fiction in a post-Harry Potter world?

Is it time to take the western out back and put the old paint out of her misery? Or is there a way to revitalize and capitalize on this most American of genres? Industry pros explore the ends and out of the 21st century western.

One of the tourists -- a retired U.S. serviceman whom officials estimated was in his 70s -- allegedly put Warner Segura in a headlock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose."

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things: "Yesterday on a stop-over at Dallas/Fort-Worth airport, I [Cory Doctorow] spotted these $2-per-use electrical outlets aimed at business travellers who wanted to get some electricity for their laptops. I found non-paying outlets throughout the airport, but wasn't sure if security would try to shut me down if I plugged into them (I was on the run and didn't get to take out my computer and check)."

Banjo Jones watches Court TV and is the go-to guy for Anna Nicole Smith updates. (Click here, for example.) But a while back, he came across this phenomenon for the first time. Now someone in the East is going to do something about it.

The Herald-Mail ONLINE: "ANNAPOLIS - Washington County Sheriff's deputy Matthew Bragunier figures that he sees, at least once a day, fake bull genitals flopping from the hitches of pickup trucks.

They're only a toy, but they're also unpleasant to look at, said Bragunier, worried what his 2-year-old girl might think someday.

'My daughter's going to see this,' he said. 'She's going to ask what this is. I don't want to be put in that spot. I don't think I ever want to be in that spot.'

Del. LeRoy E. Myers Jr., R-Washington/Allegany, agreed.

This week, he filed a bill for Maryland to ban the toys and others like them.

The bill prohibits any 'model, sign, sticker or other item' that shows uncovered human or animal genitals, as well as human buttocks or female breasts, from motor vehicles.

Since James Reasoner reviewedthe new Hard Case Crime edition of one of Lawrence Block's old softcore novels (Lucky at Cards), I thought I'd chime in. The Original Nightstand book was reprinted in hardcover by Subterranean Press a couple of years ago. I like the paperback cover better, but that's just me.

The book, by whatever name, is certainly a crime novel. In the Afterword, Block says, "I set out with the intention of writing a Gold Medal-type crime novel, and somewhere along the way I decided it wasn't good enough and finished it up as a sex novel."

The narrator, Ted Lindsay, loses his wife and goes downhill fast. He quits his job as a reporter and moves to New York to forget. He takes a job as a waiter in a greasy spoon and just lives one day to the next until he sees a woman named Cindy, Cinderella Sims. He knows she's the one, and he meets her. That's when things get complicated because Cindy has a past, and quite a past it is, involving killers and counterfeiters and lots of money. She wants Ted's help, and he's glad to give it, even though it means they're going to have to to some Very Bad Things.

There's lots of sex along the way. It's nothing special now, but it would have seemed plenty hot back in 1960. After all, as Block says, the book was written "to be read with one hand." The book isn't very long, and it would be a lot shorter if the sex were removed.

When all's said and done, I think Block was right. The book's not Gold Medal material. But it comes close enough to be a lot of fun to read, even now. Check it out.

New York Daily News - Home - Anna rage vs. mom: "Two weeks after her death, Anna Nicole Smith's voice filled a stunned courtroom yesterday as the former centerfold ranted against her despised mother, whom she sneeringly called 'mommy dearest.'

The shocking tape was introduced in an unruly Florida courtroom battle where Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, is vying for the right to bury her daughter.

Lawyers for Smith's companion Howard K. Stern played the tape in an effort to prevent Arthur from getting Smith's body.

Her voice dripping with venom, Smith declared her disdain for the woman she called 'mommy dearest.'

'You want to hear all the things she did to me? You want to hear all the things she let my father do to me, or my brother do to me? Or my sister?' Smith said, glaring at the camera. 'All the beatings and the whippin's and the rape? That's my mother. That's my mom!' she snarled."

ABC News: Bob Woodruff -- The Miraculous Recovery: "This 3-D CT scan of Bob Woodruff's skull was created at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on Jan. 31, 2006 -- just two days after Bob and his team were hit by an insurgents' bomb in Taji, Iraq. The scan shows the rocks and debris that were lodged into Bob's face and neck, and the areas around his eyes."

The Gender Genie: "Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more at BookBlog, The New York Times, and The Guardian."

I tried this with a passage picked at random from A Bond with Death, one of my mysteries with a female protagonist. The Gender Genie believed it had been written by a female, by a very high percentage.

The curvaceous actress was named clear favourite by HUGH HEFNERS' adult magazine, seeing off competition from ANGELINA JOLIE, BEYONCE KNOWLES and PAMELA ANDERSON.

The magazine writes: 'Scarlett Johansson is the apex of beauty and sensuality - from her porcelain skin to her fully feminine figure to her mysterious charisma, which is at once palpable and indefinable.'

While Playboy make it clear that Scarlett is their No1 babe, the other 24 hotties are listed in no particular order.

Names to make it onto the list include JENNIFER LOPEZ, PARIS HILTON and Sin City star JESSICA ALBA."

Monday, February 19, 2007

Megan Abbott's second novel is a dark little tale that mixes real Hollywood folks from 1949 to 1956 with fictional characters. The story is based on the disappearance of Jean Spangler, who had minor roles in two or three films (including one I've seen, Young Man with a Horn). The case is still unsolved, but Abbott presents an interesting possibility. Gil Hopkins, a reporter for a movie mag, is the focus of the story is fictional. In the novel, he's with Spangler on the night she disappears, though he doesn't know what happened to her. He takes care of the cover-up, however, and begins his climb upward. Because he's so useful, Spangler's studio hires him as a publicity man. His job is to start fires and to put them out. Sometimes they're the same fire. When another woman who was with Spangler on the night she disappeared shows up in Gil's office, looking for help, he begins to look into what happened after he last saw Spangler. He tries to discover what happened to her and to find some shred of human decency in himself. This being a very dark tale, you can imagine how much of the latter he finds. He does better, if that's the word, with the former, encountering all manner of sleaze and corruption along the way.Abbott gets the details and the atmosphere right, and Gil's quest is engrossing. It leads to a logical but surprising conclusion, and it's interesting to compare Spangler's story with that of Barbara Payton, another real-life character who also figures into the novel. Payton was in a number of movies, of which I've seen two: Dallas and the immortal Bride of the Gorilla. She, like Spangler, is on the way down, but her fate is somewhat different.Megan Abbott knows noir, and this novel is even better than her debut, Die a Little. Check it out. The cover alone is worth the time.And if you want to hear a podcast about the book, you can find it here.

Abilene Reporter-News: "NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) -- Photos of the Bahamas' immigration minister embracing Anna Nicole Smith forced the official to resign amid speculation the Playboy Playmate received special treatment when applying for permanent residency on the island nation.

Photos recently appeared in a Bahamas newspaper showing Immigration Minister Shane Gibson on a bed with Smith - both fully clothed - and embracing her.

'I want to apologize to all persons who may in any way have been offended by anything that I have said, done, or perceived to have said or done,' Gibson said on state TV Sunday night. 'To the extent that my beloved country has in any way suffered ... I want to apologize to the Bahamian people as a whole.'

However, Gibson, who fast-tracked Smith's application for residency, denied any wrongdoing and said he did not have a sexual relationship with Smith."

The Top 100 Rated Vanity License Plates | CoolPl8z.com: "The top 100 list is a living rank sorted by our visitors (you). Every time a user votes on an individual plate it's ranked from 1 to 5 and in turn ranked against the entire inventory of plates. Check back often as it changes every minute."

Many Playboy Playmates have died young - Yahoo! News: "MIAMI - The selection of Anna Nicole Smith as a Playboy Playmate in 1992 made her a member of an exclusive sorority. Her death at 39 put her in a more grisly club — Playmates who haven't reached their 50th birthday.

Automobile accidents, drug overdoses, homicides, a plane crash — all have claimed the lives of Playmates. The cause of Smith's death is still unclear.

'It's sad how many girls we've lost,' said Peter Gowland, who photographed a number of centerfolds for Playboy in the 1950s and 60s with the help of his wife.

In 1968, Gowland photographed Paige Young. In 1974, she was dead of a drug overdose.Jayne Mansfield, another Playmate he photographed, died in a car crash in 1967 at 34.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

James Reasoner reviewed an inspirational sports movie on his blog, so I told him about this one. Hey, if they show the national spelling bee on ESPN, spelling's a sport, right? And for sure the movie follows the diagram of a lot of sports movies.

Akeelah's a student in South L.A. She has the ability to spell just about anything and to be a fine student, but she hides her talent because she doesn't want the other kids to tease her. Then she wins the school's first spelling bee, and things start to change for her. She has a chance to be the national champ, but she's the underdog, competing against the kids from Beverly Hills in the next contest.

There are problems at home, too. And her coach is a guy who appears rude and arrogant. Will Akeela beat the odds and become the national spelling champ? You know I'm not going to tell. Just watch the movie. It has a fine cast, and Keke Plamer's especially good as Akeelah. The story's going to make you feel good because it's one of those that shows the world not the way it is but the way we'd all like for it to be. Could this movie ever happen? As Jake Barnes says at the end of The Sun Also Rises, "Isn't it pretty to think so." check it out.

The hairless eight-inch appendage with five longish toes isn't human after all. But no one knows yet what species -- known or undiscovered -- it is. And that has led to some wild conjecture.

Spotsylvania sheriff's officials have said the foot may have come from an 'ape-like species,' leaving Bigfoot believers across the country wondering if there may finally be proof of the creatures' existence. Others think it might not be from any primate, saying it resembles a bear's skinned hind paw.

'Discoveries like the foot in the landfill quickens the heartbeat of every Bigfoot researcher, but all of us realize it probably won't be that easy,' read a message on the Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization blog. 'Stay tuned!'"